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Lewd Interlude
Haradaya is the character designer for the strategy RPG series, Disgaea. Unlike the Matsuno family of that genre, these are, as people know, crazily over the top, with wild ideas and non-sensical stories. I don't really think they're better, but I like the style of gameplay and especially the art style.
Haradaya has a cute little blog where he posts his art, his Comiket zines and indie games he's developing. Give it a look -> ** Link **. This picture I've posted is great. It's sort of a realistic RPG tile, with a 3D cross-section. The character is Haradaya's Plenair, holding her doll of the character Same-san (Mr. Shark). They've both been in the Disgaea games multiple times. The skimpy bikini is almost a trademark of Haradaya, who is well into doing fanservice and fanservicey stuf in both is dōjinshi works and the professional Disgaea stuff.
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Takunomi Coffee Reveries, Vol. I
Contents
1 - Introduction
2 - Revitalizing the Ancients {Breath of the Wild, Final Fantasy XV}
3 - Coding for Your Own Sake {Coding, Python}
4 - LoFi Hip Hop Radio {Musical Interlude}
5 - Enticing for Computer Science {YouTube, Shōgi}
1 - Introduction
So a break for the better part of March apparently extends to most of April. That's fine. It gives time to reflect, struggle with exams, play some video games, all that good Jazz. In regards to reflection, it became apparent that daily updates was a noble goal, but a bit demanding, and my favorite posts were the Saturday recap posts, so why not try to make irregular but meatier Saturday posts only? As the content above shows, I thought it better if a bunch of good content was gathered for some relaxing perusal, coffee in hand.
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2 - Revitalizing the Ancients
I would be remise not to talk Breath of the Wild. The only problem is, the game pretty much speaks for itself, quality and qualities wise, doesn't it? Yet, since last I posted, I completed Final Fantasy XV, so it's not a bad idea to talk abot how these two ancient giants deal with awakening in today's gaming world.
I wasn't immediately floored by FFXV, but the sort of chill, super-realistic setting of magical pretty-boys and roadtripping in hostile territory quickly won me over. Talking abot it's story is both a laughably sort excercise and a maddingly long one, so I'm going to simply say: It's quite good, and quite incomplete. If you haven't played FFXV, just wait till all the updates and DLC are out, you'll get the full experience.
What FFXV truly was to me, was a fantasy of travelling around a lush green environment and mowing down wildlife and roaming weaponized armor troupes. The open world element, I realized, was simply a part of the mood. I could hardly go wherever I liked, and trying to explore, rarely revealed anything surprising. FFXV was, like so many earlier entried in the series, about it's combat. I'll get to why that's more than ok.
I haven't finished Breath of the Wild yet, but it's not trying to hide where it'll end up, so it doesn't require a lot of confidence to say that I see the bigger picture by now. BotW gets open world design. It gets it like no game before it. Everything is traversable and though there isn't a purpose to going all places, neither does it ever feel like a time waste. The level of detail in both the big picture and the smallest iota, is astounding. To be fair, BotW doesn't play much different from so many other games. Instead, it seems to say "This is how you should do open world", drops a mic and let's you play.
Both FFXV and BotW initially appear to be entering the modern world by seemingly accepting how Western developers design games: Real-time combat, ultra realistic graphics (FFXV) and go-where-ever-you-like, play-how-you-feel-like (BotW). Instead they both end up adhering to their roots in decidedly new ways. The Zelda puzzles, space-comprehension-requiring dungeons, grunting NPCs, tangible environments. It's all there, but in a far greater and smoother scale.
In many ways, it would be easy to call BotW the greater success, but I don't want to seem like I don't appreciate the technology behind FFXV. Consider the first time I entered the wood and monster infested Duscae area. I saw a creature I had a mark for. Me and my bodyguards flung into the fray and started hacking away. As the melee rolled around, we entered the vicinity of nearby monsters who happily obliged and suddenly the brawl was blooming into a war-like scenario. At that moment, a flying tank filled with soldiers came by to have a chat. I realize now, that this is crazy. The number of characters that FFXV supports at one point is mind blowing. No slow-downs, just more and more beasts. BotW on the other hand, nearly cracky my Wii U when I engaged five hulking moblins and a small batch of ice-bats in freezing tree-house. Perhaps BotW could achieve something like FFXV, but it's not the point. To these games, open world means different things. To BotW it's external: Go everywhere, always, whenever. To FFXV it's local: The immediate space is open to the battle system, now, to everyone.
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3 - Coding for Your Own Sake
Why would you want to learn programming? Maybe the idea just appeals to you, or you have some greater goal in mind for the future. Right now, you just don't have a clue what to code.
Here's a way to find a small project: Just recreate another program, in the simplest way possible, and maybe add a tiny spin on it to give yourself a challenge. Cut out visuals, complicated functionality or even user friendliness. Just make it run.
So recently I thought, how about a music player? I'd like to try my hand at Python, that seemed like a pleasant langauge to code in.
Reading around a bit, I discovered that Python is all about importing so-called modules that do a lot of the complicated stuff for you. I simply googled various key words and started copy-pasting something together. I learned stuff about how mp3 files being a bit more complicated than I expected, and so I scaled the project back to simply playing .wav files. Currently doing a course about distributed systems, I thought, maybe I should make it a small radio program? This was bit more complicated, but no more than it all resulted in the following tiny program. Simply start the program with
python3 server.py [name of song].wav
in one terminal window, and start a client in another terminal window with
python3 client.py
and hear the music play. It even works across computers on the same network.
server.py
client.py
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4 - LoFi Hip Hop Radio
Hiphop-like music coupled with looping images from amazingly relaxing anime is apparently a thing, and I see no reason not to endorse it one hundred percent. Below you see Shizuku Tsukishima from Whisper of the Heart feeling as relaxed as I hope you do. The image links to one of those previously mentioned hiphop radios.
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5 - Enticing for Computer Science
The video above is one of toco toco tv's fantastic interviews with interesting and creative Japanese people. Manao Kagawa is a professional Shogi player, and, as far as I can understand, apparently somewhat uncommon, being female.
Besides being a wonderfully relaxing interview, it features a great part in the beginning where Kagawa-san goes to browse the Shirataki Gofukuten kimono shop. It seems that being a Shogi player requires you to wear somewhat formal wear, and the result is that the players looks insanely dashing.
What's even better though, is the mentioning of the Shirataku Ayumi Hai, a yearly Shogi tournament for female players to win beautiful and (I assume) quite expensive kimono.
A quite well-discussed subject, is how the rate of women joining Computer Science and the IT work force in general, is too low. I won't get into politics here, but what is a fact, is that Computer Scientists are in short supply everywhere in the world. At the same time, it seems the education world is mainly drawing from one of two pools of potential students (men). In other words, there is a whole other, quite untapped, pool of with potential students to draw from.
I've seen some really good initiatives to reverse the current trend, but I think the one seen in the video is a wonderfully aesthetic idea. I don't know if it manages to draw in new Shogi players Japan, but having some sort of algorithm competition aimed at high school age (or younger) girl, with very sought-after, classically feminine prizes1, seems like it could draw in a segment that normally has no interest in this branch of science, despite engaging in similar ones (mathematics, medicine, biology).
Return to contents?
Big IT companies sponsor lots of things with huge amounts of money. Winning a Chanel handbag for solving algorithmic problems in high school, seems like quite a carrot. ↩︎
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Romantic Japanese Christmas Takunomi Saturday Recap
Going on a break for exams for a good deal of March, but here is a recap of a lovely week posts (sans friday, that was the start of the break). Above is a video of a girl eating lots of stuff. It's fun.
Monday. Dumb Puzzles Mixes up Combat. Looking at the simplicity of game puzzles in a positive light.
Tuesday. Game Development Essentials - The Terminal. A talkative introduction to using the terminal, a most useful tool for game developers and others alike.
Wednesday. Zeruda no CM. Giving a lot of old Japanese Zelda commercials a look.
Thursday. Dr. Advanced Wargroove: Orcs and Humans. Talking Wargroove and originality.
Friday. March Exam Break. Break announcement.
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March Exam Break
I'm going on a short blogging break till later in March (around the 22nd) due to exams. There'll still be a recap tomorrow. For today, let's just enjoy this brilliant analysis by Mark Brown, whom you can always count on for insightful thoughts on video games.
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Dr. Advanced Wargroove: Orcs and Humans
Two days ago, this trailer was released for Wargroove, a new turn-based strategy game for Switch (and other platforms, but whatever). I, like so many others, lost my shit, since it looks incredibly good and I am fucking starved for more Advance Wars. And, let's not kid ourselves: Wargroove is Advance Wars in everything by name, according to the trailer.
Yet, being okay with this, made me wonder
Why the fuck am I okay with this being a complete rip-off?
It might be a bit harsh, but I think the developers can handle it. They're making a fantastic looking game that everyone will love. My question above, is really: Why is it sometimes okay to be a blatant rip-off, and sometimes the worst thing ever? Oceanhorn is obviously a rip-off of Zelda, but in that case it makes me go "yuck!".
There might be several factors, including randomness. Sometimes effort shines through. The original real-time strategy game was Dune 2 and being the first, invented a new game genre. Yet for some reason, two years passed before Blizzard released Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, which, by definition almost, had to be considered a rip-off. What probably made a lot of people forgive W1, was that in that age, being a rip-off took a huge amount of effort, and W1 is such a better experience to play, that there almost isn't even a comparison to make.
Tile-matching puzzle games too, are a genre rife with rip-offs, and yet some titles are totally forgiven. Dr. Mario shares a playing-field setting with Tetris, but the mechanics of playing it and the aesthetics make it quite different, and saying it was Tetris-like seems like more of a description short-hand than a criticism. Puyo Puyo built on the Dr. Mario mechanics, and based the success of Street Fighter 2, decided the correct way to differentiate itself, was to as visually appealing as SF2, but with the gameplay of Dr. Mario. It's been so popular over the years, that games seem to have to show how they're not just Puyo Puyo rip-offs, even though that itself isn't even that original.
Trying to figure out where some game draws its inspirations form can also lead to embarrassment. Raining Blobs by... Raining Blobs (Really?), initially made me think of it as yet another Puyo Puyo, but speaking to the creator, I became aware of Pnickies, the far less known Compile (creator of Puyo Puyo) game that Raining Blobs had gotten its mechanics from. Suddenly social situations became a factor in the idea of when something is a rip-off: Some games are hard or impossible to play in certain parts of the world, and Compile were never good at getting their games to the Balkans. If Raining Blobs (the creators, not the game) wanted that sort of gameplay as Puyo Puyo or Pnickies might have, making it themselves was a decent course of action. Raining Blobs (the game, not the creator) by the way, is really good. Like, amazingly tight and stuffed with content and kawaii shoujo.
So Wargroove? I want it to be the Fantasy Wars to Advance Wars, that Warcraft: Orcs and Humans was to Dune 2. Even if it isn't though, I guess I don't care in this case. It looks great, and Intelligent Systems sure aren't fulfilling my needs right now.
#Warcraft#Nintendo Switch#Raining Blobs#Wargroove#Dune#Advance Wars#Street Fighter#Dr. Mario#Puyo Puyo
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Zeruda no CM
Being admittedly quite hyped for Breath of the Wild on friday, I thought I'd watch_ _all of the Japanese Zelda commercials__.
I probably didn't quite manage that though, since there are close to a hundred billion, but I saw at least like... ten. Talking about them is probably more marketing talk than game design, but it's still fun to think about what the commercial makers have been trying to convey. The old commercials could be super campy, like the NES, GB and SNES games, with plenty of over-acting actors and curiously specific references (Compare to Link's Awakening).
Another running motif, is to use cute girls to play the game in relaxing manners (Like Shokotan of Pokémon fame and Gogo Yubari!). This is pretty common for Nintendo games (and games in general, I guess). This long one for Phantom Hourglass is quite endearing, and, really, a bit brave, since it's so slow moving.
My favorite was the one I've used as a header image, for the Wii U hd remake of Wind Waker. It seems to play on the nostalgia that Wind Waker is bound to carry by now, but it's also really refreshing to see the commercial simply say "This game has some amazingly cute characters and great designs, and really, it it brings the world to life".
Sometimes weird stuff happens. The Ocarina of Time commercials exist in two versions: One showcasing a girl playing the game, one with a boy. Later on though it seems, since the games sold a lot, new ones were released only showing the fucking ending and final battle. Such an odd choice.
The commercials in Japan for Breath of the Wild have so far been a bit uninteresting, although quite useful from a consumer point of view: They show the game. I can't help hoping for some more weird stuff. So hyped for friday.
#the legend of zelda#breath of the wild#minish cap#ocarina of time#link's awakening#skyward sword#kawaii shoujo#shokotan#gogo yubari#phantom hourglass
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Game Development Essentials - The Terminal
Around december I spoke with the butter-voiced-blessed Declan Dineen, for his podcast show Checkpoints.
Now that it's out there, and our conversation has been edited into a pleasant little bite, I thought, well, it's nice and all that I'm praising learning how to code, but it's important never to forget: Getting started is never as easy as an experienced person might make it sound.
Because of that, I thought I should introduce something that might seem very hard to grasp for newcomers in coding, yet really is quite fun to use: The Terminal!
The Terminal app, as it's called on mac, or CMD on Windows, or XTERM on Linux (if you're running Linux you probably know all of this already) is a text-based version of controlling you're computer. You can do all the usual stuff like open programs, copy files, shut down your computer, delete stuff or tweek your computer.
Using the terminal, is an interesting way of using your computer differently, for the same stuff. You navigate around the computer by writing cd [folder name], perhaps pressing tab to auto-complete, and cd .. or just .. to go back to a previous folder. Files can be opened by writing open [file name], or shortcuts can be made, so you can start Chrome by writing chr or something else.
The terminal is also the simplest way to create and execute your own programs. If you write a java program, you write javac [program name].java to make it a runnable program, and you run the program by writing java [program name] (no extension). Sometimes programs are even built so that you need the terminal to run them. Writing vim or vim [file name] opens a weird and hard-to-understand writing program called vim, and use it to edit text files.
The terminal even makes me think about game design in a different way. Games have evolved into what they are today, partly by shedding what they were years ago. They're definitely more accessible, but that doesn't guarantee they're always better. I think that it's important to tools that do things differently, in order to widen my perspective, and perhaps do design in a not necessarily more original way, but a less conventional way.
A weird tool like the terminal or a hard to understand text editor like Vim, a ways to understand, that the established can be done differently. This lesson is good for creative thinking, and the knowledge of using the terminal, is good for any aspiring game developer.
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Dumb Puzzles Mixes up Combat
Link's Awakening only has few good puzzles. The third boss (Splitting the eyeball), the 7th dungeon's premise (Navigating the tower with a ball) and the moving floor things in the 8th dungeon.
They aren't hard though. They are opaque. I was stuck for several months as a child due to the first in that list. Not being a native English speaker didn't help me either back then.
Yet this made me wonder, what was the better solution? Nintendo's answer has since then been to outright tell us when a puzzle is a puzzle, and since they're never really complex, telling us about a puzzle is equivalent to telling us the solution.
The sentiment mentioned by developers like Phil Fish and Jonathan blow in _Indie Game Life After_speaks about how some western developers today, would probably rather see the puzzles slowly transition into much more fiendish puzzles (without outright explaining everything along the way). Kind of like how the puzzles in The Witness probably transition1 from easy to devious.
What I'm suggesting is probably gonna sound like fanboy Stockholm Syndrome, but what if the best solution, for these games at least, was the way Nintendo has done so far?
Zelda games are part action games, part puzzle games. They're light on plot and lore, but big on world building through quirkily animated characters, great music and interesting locations. Things move at a brisk pace. Enemies have little health, Link can often roll (or backflip) to move faster and eventually, the player acquires some means of fast-travel (Bird, tornado).
The puzzles don't slow things down. In fact, since they hardly even act as cerebral stopping points, they can hardly be called puzzles, that's just convention 2.
Instead, the puzzles are slight mechanical interruptions, alterations or additions. Shooting the obvious eye above a door with a slingshot is no more difficult than wailing on a Lizard dude but it changes up the flow and sometimes feels good.
A good lesson to learn from this, is that the tools of Zelda are manifestations of different mechanics, and they puzzleize straight-up hack-'n-slash gameplay. As noted earlier, this is of course a way of thought that has frustrated many players and developers for all sorts of reasons, but damnit, I like it, and I believe there can be a huge difference in my game design if I make use of this way of thought deliberately, instead of simply making my game accessible.
Sodagirl already contains elements of this way of thinking, but having specifically detailed how it works, gives me a better tool for iterating and changing. Puzzleizing barebones combat changes up the basic gameplay, but doesn't break the flow and speed, and sometimes even allow the player to branch out, performing the occasionally repetitive tasks of video games, in personal ways.
I'm gonna be honest: I Haven't played it yet, but it seems like a good guess though. ↩︎
The opposite direction, making the combat all about puzzles, definitely make for slower, but not worse gameplay, see the unpolished but brilliant indie game Auro (iOS/Android and Steam) ↩︎
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Energetic Inspirational Takunomi Recap Saturday
Lots of late posts this week, but I gotta say, it was still a good one. This video of Ririri (「りりり」) is so fucking full of energy, and was one of the original inspirations for Sodagirl. I always feel like getting stuff done when I hear this.
Monday. Blow up some Shit - Then Tell a Story. What if not just story, but gameplay too, got in the way of gameplay? I know, that's like, a paradox!
Tuesday. The Mandatory Beach Episode. I can't promise any fan-service here, but a walk on the beach is nice too, right? Even in video games.
Wednesday. Playful Space. The book of the week. This probably won't become a weekly thing, but it's still nice.
Thursday. The Lowliest Enemy. There's a lot to be gained by giving the less important enemies some extra thought.
Friday. … Less is Bore. Marvelling at the size of some seemingly small and simple games.
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… Less is Bore
So a few weeks ago, I wrote about how traditional Japanese aesthetics can help make games seem bigger and full of life with mere suggestion.
This doesn’t change that sometimes, some games are just fucking huge.
Take the original Pokémon games (red and green, 1996). They contain one hundred and fifty monsters. The number of Pokémon is currently ridiculously high, but for the initial pair of games to contain so many unique monsters, that act both as enemies and playable characters, each with their own sprite, blows me away. Compare this to the first Final Fantasy (FF1), which had 128 enemies. Granted, the Pokémon R/B/G world really isn’t so big by itself (Not including dungeons). Yet the areas that seem to be just unnecessarily stretched and winding corridors, are actually playing two parts: They are sort of dungeons by themselves, and most importantly, they are wildernes to hunt more pokémon.
While the individual Pokémon don’t really differentiate mechanically, the game does have 55 different spells/attacks, divided across the now classic expanded rock/paper/scissors system. Again, compare this to FF1. 32 spells. It’s a lot, especially from such an old game, but Pokemon just seems huge in comparison.
Another GameBoy title that manages to feel huge by simply just containing an enourmous amount of content, is Link’s Awakening (LA). This game is structurally pretty much a remake of the original Legend of Zelda (LoZ), but with more advanced controls, more complex tools, an actual narrative and a fuller world. While LoZ was 8x16 screens big, plus 8 dungeons of monsters to kill, LA is 16x16 screens big and has 8 far more complex dungeons of unique architecture, changing perspectives, and even a few good puzzles. The game even has __eighty-one_ enemies, 16 traps and 9 bosses, many of which function mechanically pretty differently from each other, which is pretty damn impressive.
Size doesn’t matter, but when somebody manages to fit games like the original Pokémon and LA on friggin’ GameBoy cartridges, I can’t help but be impressed.
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The Lowliest Enemy
It doesn't take more than one or two strikes before the first enemies in most games disappear in an explosion of smoke or blood. Sometimes it's satisfying, other times its empty. Most often though, it's a simple task, and one we have to repeat many times over.
The reason is probably as straightforward as we need to understand how to kill. Both the seasoned players and the green ones. This reason also explains why the first enemies don't have complex behaviour. That would make trouble for the new players. The simplicity is sometimes alleviated by good visual design (like the classic look of the Dragon Quest slime or the splicers of Bioshock).
Another, probably more interesting thing to do, is to hide more interesting behaviour behind the player's increasing body of knowledge and skills.
Take the replacable grunts in the classic Viewtiful Joe. Punch them a bit, they die, but the entire system of the game is built around juggling the deaths of these poor sods, so that that cause more havoc in their demise.
Another interesting mechanic is, if simple enemies play the role of both chum and resource. Any game with a creature that is farmed for ingredients fullfil this role, but if the resource gathered is part of the overall gameplay loop, the harvesting makes the simple enemies feel like they are part of an eco-system.
My favorite mechanic though, is it simply just feels gooooood to kill a weak (or any) enemy. It doesn't even have to be the final blow though: Good old Tales of Phantasia for the snes is a delight for all 60-70 hours of the game to hammer endless amounts of fantasy beasts to the ground. The best example, though, is Resident Evil 4, where even the easiest enemy, is a treasure trove of fun ways to die (including the superb headshot-pumpkin-explosion) while also being a system for survival, where enemies can be incapacitated, slowed down, disarmed or simply murdered.
Not all these mechanics work in all games (and definitely not all at once), but the initial enemies could definitely be considered a chance to both let experienced players relax, provide immediate satisfaction in the battle system, and perhaps even be icebergs, eventually showing the full depth and breadth of the game.
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Playful Space
I've been reading a book called Personal, Portable, Pedestrian on how Japanese youth adopted the cellphone, or keitai as the book prefers to call it, since feature phones in Japan worked a bit differently there than other places (email instead of texting, use of internet through i-mode, which was like a better wap internet1).
Even though the book is of course, in some ways, obsolete (it came out before smartphones were a thing), it's still really good at showing how cellphones created a new, or altered, technologically augmented social sphere. It's really interesting, and encouraging study into how technology has a different effect once it takes a place in the everydays, and how technology can be cozy. It's even a reminder to not get too scared of how much we might be using our smartphones and tablets, as intimacy is different, but still a real thing, when it happens in virtual space.
Playfulness has changed with technology as well. The games I like, often aren't really meant to be social experiences, and yet shared experiences naturally become common ground and leads to friendship. Game technology in and of itself too, has changed how social space and friendship might be. TVs with video game consoles and controllers plugged in create the couch experience (The ultimate of which I've already discussed) and as far back as Phantasy Star Online, consoles have been an even easier way of staying connected and play with friends virtually.
This last example seems to be the default way of playing socially for many people today. Built-in systems to easily connect, chat and play with friends. With the Switch, Nintendo of course wants to do things differently (as usual), but it will be interesting to see how it works out:
The unpluggable controllers for to create an instant multiplayer device anywhere is a great idea. There's no discussion, it's just great.
Trailers suggest that Switch consoles can sense each other, so two switches means instant four-player multiplayer. Again, this is great.
Online chat is done on a separate smartphone app. What? This seems so counter-intuitive. Why, Nintendo? What's the point? Is the software a resource thief on the Switch?
The last item on that list made me go as far as to think Nintendo might be planning a full-on android phone. It seems weird to need a non-Nintendo device to get the full experience on a Nintendo console/tablet, and it seems weird that there are Nintendo games that can't be played on Nintendo devices. Finally, whether or not Nintendo will keep supporting the 3DS, eventually the 3DS will be over, and a 3DS-2 doesn't make sense when there is a Switch. Phones and tablets aren't the completely same market though, and if the famicom/nes were the Nintendo answer to the PC, and the Switch is first gaming tablet, why couldn't there be a Nintendo Phone as an answer to the smartphone?
What I don't have an idea about, but am really curious to see, would be, what kind of social playful space, could a Nintendo Phone create? What feeling does a more playful device create in such a cozy and personal space?
Which was shitty internet, if anyone doesn't know. ↩︎
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The Mandatory Beach Episode
Going full-on nostalgia here, although it is in the name of the creative process for Sodagirl. What should beaches contain in games? What are the best beaches?
They're a weird thing aren't they? Real beaches aren't completely inaccessible to the average person, unlike ancient ruins, magical forests, or cursed dungeons. They have sand or rocks. Water. Some are warmer than others. Perhaps you can get an icecream or long for summer during a winter stroll.
Many games can't really make use of the swimming and sunbathing though. Super Mario Galaxy did it great in Beach Bowl Galaxy: All scuba-koopa diving, relaxing music and beautiful water
Good old Little Big Adventure 2 (LBA2) and Mother 3 both do sort of the same thing as the other. The beach is just for show, to add a feeling of space realness to the game. In LBA2 you even have a romantic walk on the beach with you preggers waifu. Whom you can immediately murder in a horrible murder suicide as soon as you touch water.
The beach in Link's Awakening is hugely important in a narrative sense, and if you're stuck on a puzzle, but otherwise it's rather inconsequential. (That scene though!).
I have other favorites, but that's enough for now.
The beach I imagine and have planned for Sodagirl is supposed to be important. Both size-wise and in relation to the story. I like the holiday feel, and relaxing feel beaches seem to invite. Staring out into the ocean seems to be a big part of it as well, but design doesn't fit well with this. I wonder what I can do to alleviate that.
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Blow up some Shit - Then Tell a Story
It's probably not a huge risk to say that better technology begat more expansive storytelling in video games. I've probably written before that I both like stories in games, and find them distracting to what games do well1. Long running series often show this transition really well, with early games being almost arcade games, and eventually, detailed 3d graphics almost begged the designers to write stories with character development and twisting narratives.
A weird thought though, is that sometimes, what games does do really well, can be distracting to what games do really well.
The instant gratification that older games (and some still today) give, is because they let us go from beginning to action almost from the get-go. Look at Command & Conquer. It's a real-time strategy game, but so many of the complex systems and details present in todays RTS games just don't exist yet. On the other hand, it's definitely a huge step up from the completely unaccesible Dune 2 before it.
I want to strive towards a middle ground from all of these (Who the fuck wouldn't? Saying you're trying to stay balanced is a huge fucking cop-out): The first Command & Conquer is such a fun experience to just enter and play. Yet role-playing games like Final Fantasy defintely don't really get fun until FFV where a system with some depth enters the mix, and allowed me to become engrossed in the mechanics of the game. Story is hard to pinpoint. I've often read the argument that some games don't need stories, like puzzle games, but Clash of Heroes for the Nintendo DS really showed how even that type of game can even more of a thrill to play, if you care about the situation.
Thinking about my own game, I've been trying to give the player a reason to become invested and some degree of story just seems like the correct way to go about. It's an abstract kind of world, but it's not a totally abstract game (like Tetris), so this idea of going back in game history and seeing when games slowly transitioned from light exposition to gradually more complex dramas, helps me understand how much is needed to tell a story in an abstract world.
The games from the NES, SNES and GameBoy definitely have a lot to offer in that department, but I hope to more, even in newer generations as play more games.
Give us complex systems to play with and master, helped by computers to be easy to interact with. ↩︎
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Newton-defying Takunomi Saturday Recap Post
It might be a bit lame just simply just post an advertisement for the saturday recap post, but this short-film is still just so amazingly relaxing and funny, I just don't care.
Monday. The Semi-Immersive. The VR talk continued from last week.
Tuesday. Sudden 1-hour Game Jam (Part 1?). Little bit of sketching, little bit of coding.
Wednesday. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 3 for Switch?. Wishful thinking and wishful reasoning.
Thursday. Takunomi Book Club - The Art of Failure. The first book review on this game blog. How defiant!
Friday. Rainy Days. A small line of thought on open world and feeling sick and getting better.
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Rainy Days
Having been sick a couple of days now, I started to feel better, while drinking coffee this morning and streaming more Final Fantasy XV to my Vita (Thank god for 90 Mbps download). Still a great game, yet I'm starting to see the issues with the open world structure.
It encourages me to go so far off the right path, that I've become godlike, completely unhinged, powerful as a motherfucker. The story doesn't reflect this in any way, though, making me think how the open world structure works better for a game like GTA, where you do not become a reality distorting J-Pop Battle Wizard.
When I went to bed sick, there was snow outside my window. This morning, I could smell the springtime. I think I'm gonna be very nostalgic towards this game if I end up connecting that scent with aimlessly slaughering wildllife in the Duscae area.
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Takunomi Book Club - The Art of Failure
One of my favorite books on video games is Jesper Juul's The Art of Failure.
It's a short academic book written in completely legible language, yet maintains the depth of a thoughtful paper written on the idea of failing in video games.
In Failure, Juul manages to outline a greater understanding of what kind of medium modern video games (anno 2013) are. He draws from many and varied games, from academic experiments to contemporary indie games (Super Meat Boy and Limbo) and triple-A titles (Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption).
What's important to me, is that Failure is about the games and what the games do, and doesn't devolve into studying people who play games as some sort of separate race, and Failure doesn't make the most important or noteworthy aspect games the narrative, while simultaneously not disregarding how important narrative can be in certain games, or how the idea of failure is skewed in narratively tragic games.
This isn't specifically a guide on game design, which tickles me in the right way, as Failure doesn't try to compartmentalize the creative aspects of design, into stringent boxes of types of games. The different categories that Juul outlines, are instead easy ways of referring back to the subject at hand.
So yeah, a wholehearted recommendation from here: The Art of Failure is an honest and introspective book, that pulls out an easy understanding of what it might important to win a game. Juul is always looking for a complex way of understanding a situation, never settling an easy explanation of simplified analysis.
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